What's obvious in this schedule is the lack of cycling training, some days I commute on a 60km return route and some evenings I go out with the bike. I was thinking of damping the spinning class and replace it with badly needed intervals.

Can you help me get a plan? I might have to lose one more day from the gym as I don't have that much free time.

I know this is going to be of little help but you are 5 months out, you need to be doing lots of cycling to get ready for cross. Heck, I am doing 15+ hours on the bike a week and none of it is just riding around. At this point you need to be building your aerobic base with some neromuscular work tossed in. The more time on the bike the better. Do you train with HR or Power? How many hours a week can you ride? What is your bike training history like, ie hours in the past? ever raced CX?

You are right, it's going to be tough, but I want to give it a proper go anyway to see how I will do. I am training with HR, no power meter available. I can do 6+ hours on a saturday and I think I can put an hour every day as well. I 've never done any properly structured training, but I 've spent quite few hours on the bike. Last year for example I did the Raid Pyrénéen so I was training in long distance tempo. This was last July though, and since then I 've done very few things, apart from a couple of races and some long saturday spins. As for CX I haven't raced, but I was doing some training two years ago to race CX but that never happened, so I kinda know what's physically needed, I was constantly in the red in the training. I just hope with proper interval training and a strict schedule I ll see fast results.

CX racing is only going to be 1hr long. Have you ever raced CX before? Done much MTBing?

CX in my experience is a threshold effort with bursts of power and that is what you need to be training. Also if you are new to CX there is a lot to be made up by getting your skills down. If possible hit up training camps. If not learn the simple dismout and remounting techniques from a slow speed. It will get you more confident at higher speeds. Practice, practice and practice. Then practice more.

For now I would work on your threshold and vo2max efforts, and practice the skills. As you get nearer to the season 30 of/on efforts from your threshold will get you used to what you'll experience in a CX race.

If you can as well find somewhere you can practice your bike handling, the better you are the more rest/energy saved in the technical parts of any course.

Of course I'm a fairly slow CX, but I use what I've learnt to get faster

_________________"Step forward the climber and all those who worship at the altar of lightness" - R. Millar

Quick down and dirty paln for the next few months. *workouts from this page 2x per week- http://www.fascatcoaching.com/sweetspottraining.html*workouts from this page 2x per week-http://www.coachr.org/a_graphical_model_for_interval.htm*workouts from this page 1x per week-http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/anatomyandphysiology/a/LT_training.htm*one long level 2 workout per week. *one rest day.

With this you get two anaerobic, two sub threshold, one threshold and one long ride a week.

If this kicks your butt, cut out one of the anaerobic efforts and do a level 2-3 workout for 1-2h instead.

Ok.. so I am back from holidays.. and have read all this which are very interesting indeed, but I have a problem to quantify it.. Can someone help with a schedule? If If I keep Monday and Thursday for gym work, what should I be doing the rest of the days if lets say I have 60-90mins during the week and approximately 6-8 hours in the weekend? I am not being lazy, but I don't trust myself to come up with a training plan, so if you give me something for dummies with timings I'd be grateful.

^ random training produces random results. No athlete of note does random training. Doing strength/conditioning work is not an issue itself, some of the exercises used by crossfit - kettlebells stuff, turkish get ups, olympic lifts etc all all fine. But plan it, schedule appropriate training and most importantly rest with the cycling training. FWIW, if you're training and racing cyclocross sufficiently then only the thing I would really focus on is some basic strength work (squat, dead lift etc).

If you're still keen to go hard in the "box" then things like Interval Weight Training (IWT) can be used effectively.

Given your circumstances I'd suggest something along the lines below:-

Thanks very much Tapeworm. The reason I am keen to keep the gym is because I have issues with my shoulders and knees and if I leave with no training (and bike does nothing for it ) I can't even lift the grocery bags, but I appreciate what you 're saying.

Because I don't have a power meter, only HR, when you say hard should I be looking to reach 95% of my max?

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